Hi everyone, I’ve stayed away for a while as I was overwhelmed with information. I’m waiting on radiotherapy for my dcis. I’ve had surgery and just got my letter from the oncologist. Seeing high grade dcis with necrosis is scaring me. My surgeon was happy that he got clear margins and surgery was a success. My oncologist has told me even without radiotherapy my chance of recurrence over 10 years is 15%. 5-6% with radiotherapy. I’m becoming very focussed however on the words high grade and necrosis. The area removed was large 20mm but I think 55mm was taken to include a micro calcification that was picked up on the mammogram after I’d had my sample biopsy. They attempted to do another biopsy but it was too difficult to pick up so it was just removed during surgery.
My oncologist last week didn’t seem at all concerned and even stressed I didn’t have to have radiotherapy if I didn’t want to, her letter however is stressing me out and I’m not sure why.
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I can answer 1 bit, but not the other. Although your DCIS was 'high grade, that just puts it at a higher risk of it possibly turning into IDC in the future, but you weren’t there yet, so it hadn’t formed the ability to spread. If you graded it on the IDC scale, you would be a 0. My IDC was surrounded by some medium and high grade DCIS - often found together as cancer can develop from DCIS.
The necrosis bit, not sure, although the literal meaning of necrosis is dead tissue.
Overall, if you have good margins, then it should all be gone.
The radio may help to prevent other breast tissue from developing DCIS in future.
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Thank you for your reply, it helps a lot. I’m not being at all rational right now.